


Beware Dumpsters Bearing Gifts

by Brumeier



Series: After the Eclipse [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Community: story-works, Gen, Prompt Fill, Small Towns, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 03:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11912328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: The eclipse was the most exciting thing to happen in the village, until that mysterious dumpster showed up.





	Beware Dumpsters Bearing Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Story Works flash challenge: Eclipse

The dumpster showed up after the eclipse, sitting on the wooded edge of Miles Park. It was mottled yellow and green, one paint job showing through the other, and the whole thing was pitted with rust. There was no logo on it, no corporate phone number, nothing to identify where it came from or who it belonged to.

"Best call the sheriff," Sally Everly said to her husband Bill. Their convenience store was across the street and Sally had noticed the dumpster straight off when they opened up that morning.

Every customer who came in that day had something to say about it.

"Not one of Erickson's," Sheriff Ramly said while he fixed himself some coffee. "I called them first. Old Man thinks it's someone horning in on their operation."

"It's an eyesore," Dulcie Byers said, nose wrinkled in disgust. She was treasurer of the village beautification club.

"People got no respect for public property," Mr. Henderson said when he dropped off a box of his homemade beef jerky. "Kids today don't care 'bout nothin'."

The problem of the dumpster remained unsolved by the time Sally and Bill closed up for the night.

The next morning the dumpster had a blue skull spray-painted on the side, so Mr. Henderson might have been right about the kids.

"Still can't track down an owner," Sheriff Ramly said, helping himself to a doughnut. "Old Man Erickson won't haul it away, not until he knows who to send the bill to."

Sally nodded, only half listening. She was boxing up the remaining eclipse-viewing glasses and bumper stickers. Next solar eclipse wasn't supposed to come to their area for twenty-eight years, and she wondered if she should save the glasses for then. It was a long ways off, but revenue was revenue so she sealed up the box, wrote on the side of it with a black Sharpie, and had Bill put it in the back room.

Talk of the dumpster gradually trickled off. It was just squatting there and people lost interest, particularly after Becky and Brian Dolge had a huge fight right in the middle of Main Street and she kicked him in his most sensitive area.

"That was a disgusting display," Dulcie Byers said to everyone that came in the store after her. She'd been front and center for the whole spectacle. "That's not the way a lady should act."

"Becky ain't no lady," Horace Bell said. He slapped a dirty, wrinkled-up five dollar bill on the counter in exchange for a can of Red Man.

Two days later, and the dumpster was back in the village spotlight. Sally only heard the news secondhand from Betty Stables, who'd been at the café when Elmo Wright had come bursting in talking about what happened. Apparently, he'd climbed up on the dumpster and looked inside, and sitting right there on top of a pile of garbage was a rare, mint-condition record album, the self-same one he'd been searching for as a gift for his daddy.

"Pretty coincidental," Betty remarked. She tried one of the lipsticks on the tray by the register. "If you believe in that sort of thing."

Sally believed in a lot of things, especially herself, which also made her feel a little conceited. But she wasn’t at all sure she believed in a dumpster suddenly spitting up a whole host of things both rare and incredibly ordinary, seemingly whatever the person poking around the dumpster wanted most of all.

"Found a vintage knocker," Sheriff Ramly said. He pulled an ice pop out of the freezer. "Perfect for the new front door."

Suddenly the park was full of people. Seemingly the whole village was out, all of them trying to get their fondest consumer desires from the eclipse dumpster. It took a couple of days for people to work out that the thing only produced one treasure a day. There were fistfights after that, no-one wanting to wait their turn. Sheriff Ramly had to conscript more deputies.

Sally wasn’t about to go over to that dumpster and see what might be waiting in it for her. The whole thing left a sour taste in her mouth. Dulcie Byers, proudly wearing the string of pearls she swore were Jackie Kennedy’s, said it was magic. Sally was pretty sure magic wasn't real, but she knew for a fact evil was. Just as she knew nothing good was ever free. Whoever had painted the skull on the side of the dumpster must've felt that too.

She might've gone to Preacher Cushwood about it, except he was still glowing over the old leather-bound Bible he'd found in the dumpster. The last straw was when Bill showed up after his lunch break with a brand new fishing pole. Sally stomped on it till it looked more like that modern sculpture they were always putting up in the city. 

“Not in my house,” she said. 

“We’re not _in_ the house,” Bill helpfully pointed out, the bent and broken remains of the fishing rod cradled in his arms.

“No good’ll come of that dumpster, you mark my words.”

Two days later Nester Groves fell into it, and no-one ever saw him again. Sally didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but he most certainly wasn’t in the village anymore. Or in the dumpster. Sheriff Ramly cordoned off the area and had his people climb in to take a look, but all they found was one of Nester’s tennis shoes.

Everyone was divided on the issue, probably because Nester hadn’t been all that popular. If Mayor Haddad or that slutty Gina Carrera had gotten sucked into the dumpster there’d have been a bigger outcry. And maybe that wasn’t a good attitude for a Christian woman to have, but Sally stood by it.

“He’s just hiding out somewhere,” Dulcie Byers said the next time she stopped in. If nothing else, the dumpster had brought a lot of people into the store who needed to stay hydrated and fed while they waited their turn garbage picking. “It’s like one of those magic tricks where you think he’s in the box but he’s not.”

Sally didn’t believe in magic, and she also didn’t believe that Nester Groves would ever again see the light of day. But she was prepared to let it go, just like the song said, until the dumpster ate little Alyce French, who wasn’t actually French at all. She was only in the sixth grade.

“Woman, where do you think you’re goin’?” Bill tried to block the door but Sally shoved him aside. “You said I couldn’t take nothin’ from it!”

“I’m not taking anything,” Sally replied over her shoulder. 

The police tape wasn’t doing much to keep the crowd back. Sally had to muscle her way to the front, and she made sure to give greedy Dulcie Byers a sharp elbow. Tommy Bunch was clinging to the side of the dumpster like a barnacle and Sally pulled him down by the straps on his overalls.

“Go home,” she told him. “I’m sure your momma has chores that need doing.”

Tommy stuck out his tongue and the assembled crowd booed. That was fine with Sally. They could boo her all they wanted, but she was done putting up with the yellow-green abomination. And she couldn’t wait on the next solar eclipse to send it back where it came from. (She’d told Bill it was somehow tied to that celestial marvel, but he just shook his head and went back to changing the air filter in his truck.)

Sally banged on the side of the dumpster. “Hello in there! I would like to address the owner of this dumpster directly.”

“Sally Everly, you don’t have the sense God gave a rock!” someone shouted from the crowd. 

Undeterred, Sally pulled a piece of red chalk out of her purse and drew a symbol on the side of the dumpster beside the skull. It was older than Viking runes, and much more powerful.

There was a loud, metallic clang, and then the dumpster took on a faint, greenish glow. Sally nodded. That was more like it. Everyone gathered around her took a step or two back, except for Tommy Bunch who ran home like his britches were on fire.

_…remove it…_

They were words, but not the kind a person could rightfully hear with their ears. It was more like a vibration of all the bones in their body, which somehow allowed the words to form inside their head. Sally didn’t like it, but at least her friends and neighbors were finally done being difficult; they cowered in the grass, fearful.

“I will not. You need to take this thing and go, before I change my mind and destroy it outright.”

_…wouldn’t dare…_

“Oh, no? Try me. I grew up with four brothers, I’m not afraid of you.”

_…need sacrifice…_

“Not in my village you don’t. I don’t know what you did with the little girl or Nester, but you had no right to take them.” Sally shook the piece of chalk at the side of the dumpster for emphasis. “I won’t let you take any more. Go back where you came from.”

_…make me…_

“Sicut fluit cera a fácie ígnis,” Sally said.

_…Latin? Seriously?..._

“And this.” She pulled a small butane torch from her purse and lit it up. It was only a mid-size model, because anyone who had need of the heavy-duty torches went to the wholesale place up on Route 30, but it burned hot enough for her needs.

_…go away…_

The not-voice felt fearful, as it should’ve. The dumpster wasn’t really a dumpster after all, but merely something else _pretending_ to be a dumpster. Something that didn’t care for the feel of a twenty-five hundred degree torch in such close proximity.

“Get going, or I swear I will melt you down and turn you into Ben Wa balls for diseased sex workers. Not that I have anything against sex workers, everyone needs to make a living.”

_…disgusting…_

Sally could feel the energy of the dumpster drawing away, growing smaller and denser as if it were collapsing on itself. Which certainly seemed to be the case, at least to the highly disadvantaged human eye.

The dumpster winked out of existence and Sally extinguished her torch. Everyone in the park just stared at her. 

“These are on special sale all week,” she said, holding the butane torch aloft. “Never hurts to have one handy.”

This time when she moved through the crowd she was given a wide berth. Sally crossed the street and went back inside the store. Bill was at the window, eyes wide.

“How in the hell did you know how to do that?” he asked.

“I did have a life before I met you, Bill,” Sally replied. “Can you go in the back and bring out more Pop Tarts?”

Talk of the mysterious eclipse dumpster lasted another week or so, and for a while everyone gave Sally the cold shoulder. Some were fearful, others angry, but even that gave way soon enough. 

“You won’t believe the trouble Becky Dolge got into this time,” Sheriff Ramly said.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** I’m not even sure what to say about this. I wasn’t going to write anything for the eclipse challenge because I have a much bigger challenge I need to finish. And then a dumpster showed up at First Job, left right in our driveway and full of roofing debris. The local Constable was called in and it took the better part of the day to get it sorted out and removed. And as I watched all the men stand around it speculating, I thought ‘the dumpster showed up after the eclipse’ and this story just kind of fell out.


End file.
